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typhoons
Category 6? Scientists Highlight 'Growing Inadequacy' of Current Hurricane Scale
The experts found five storms that would fit into their hypothetical category—and they have all happened since 2013.
Feb 05, 2024
Building on arguments and warnings that climate campaigners and experts have shared for years, a pair of scientists on Monday published a research article exploring the "growing inadequacy" of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale and possibly adding a Category 6.
Global heating—driven by human activities, particularly the extraction and use of fossil fuels—is leading to stronger, more dangerous storms that are called hurricanes in the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, typhoons in the Northwest Pacific, and tropical cyclones in the South Pacific and Indian oceans.
The Saffir-Simpson scale "is the most widely used metric to warn the public of the hazards" of such storms, Michael Wehner of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and James Kossin of the First Street Foundation explained in their new paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"There haven't been any in the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico yet but they have conditions conducive to a Category 6, it's just luck that there hasn't been one yet."
"Our motivation is to reconsider how the open-endedness of the Saffir-Simpson scale can lead to underestimation of risk, and, in particular, how this underestimation becomes increasingly problematic in a warming world," Wehner said in a statement.
The scale is: Category 1 (74-95 mph); Category 2 (96-110 mph); Category 3 (111-129 mph); Category 4 (130-156 mph); and Category 5 (greater than 157 mph). Wehner and Kossin considered creating a Category 6 for storms with sustained winds of at least 192 mph.
The pair found five storms that would fit into their Category 6: Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, Hurricane Patricia in 2015, Typhoon Meranti in 2016, Typhoon Goni in 2020, and Typhoon Surigae in 2021.
"The most intense of these hypothetical Category 6 storms, Patricia, occurred in the Eastern Pacific making landfall in Jalisco, Mexico, as a Category 4 storm," the paper notes. "The remaining Category 6 storms all occurred in the Western Pacific."
"Two of them, Haiyan and Goni, made landfall on heavily populated islands of the Philippines. Haiyan was the costliest Philippines storm and the deadliest since the 19th century, long before any significant warning systems," the paper continues.
The 2013 storm killed at least 6,300 people in the Philippines and left millions more homeless.
"There haven't been any in the Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico yet but they have conditions conducive to a Category 6, it's just luck that there hasn't been one yet," Wehner toldThe Guardian. "I hope it won't happen, but it's just a roll of the dice. We know that these storms have already gotten more intense, and will continue to do so."
As the paper details, the pair found that "the Philippines, parts of Southeast Asia, and the Gulf of Mexico are regions where the risk of a Category 6 storm is currently of concern. This risk near the Philippines is increased by approximately 50% at 2°C above preindustrial and doubled at 4°C. Increased risk Category 6 storms in the Gulf of Mexico increases even more, doubling at 2°C above preindustrial and tripling at 4°C."
Governments worldwide have signed on to the Paris agreement, which aims to keep global temperature rise this century below 2°C, with a more ambitious target of 1.5°C, but scientists stress that policymakers are crushing hopes of meeting either goal.
Wehner said that "even under the relatively low global warming targets of the Paris agreement... the increased chances of Category 6 storms are substantial in these simulations."
The scientists considered what the addition of a Category 6 could look like, but they aren't necessarily advocating for it. Kossin said in a statement that "tropical cyclone risk messaging is a very active topic, and changes in messaging are necessary to better inform the public about inland flooding and storm surge, phenomena that a wind-based scale is only tangentially relevant to."
"While adding a sixth category to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale would not solve that issue, it could raise awareness about the perils of the increased risk of major hurricanes due to global warming," he continued. "Our results are not meant to propose changes to this scale, but rather to raise awareness that the wind-hazard risk from storms presently designated as Category 5 has increased and will continue to increase under climate change."
The Washington Post on Monday also emphasized the need for improved communication about flooding and storm surge:
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research shows such water-related hazards are hurricanes' deadliest threats, said Deirdre Byrne, a NOAA oceanographer who studies ocean heat and its role in hurricane intensification. While adding a Category 6 "doesn't seem inappropriate," she said, combining the Saffir-Simpson scale with something like an A through E rating for inundation threats might have a greater impact.
"That might save even more lives," Byrne said.
In a statement, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan seconded those concerns. He said NOAA forecasters have "tried to steer the focus toward the individual hazards," including storm surge, flooding rains, and dangerous rip currents, rather than overemphasizing the storm category, and, by extension, the wind threats alone.
"It's not clear that there would be a need for another category even if storms were to get stronger," he said.
Even if the center has no plans to expand the wind scale, "talking about hypothetical Category 6 storms is a valuable communication strategy for policymakers and the public," former NOAA hurricane scientist Jeff Masters wrote Monday, "because it is important to understand how much more damaging these new superstorms can be."
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After Paris: How to Fight for Climate Change's First Victims?
Dec 24, 2015
When I was in Paris, I met with Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, a poet and young mother from the Marshall Islands. Kathy told stories of king tides breaking through her coral island's seawalls, with water quietly rising into her sleeping cousin's bedroom before a huge wave came and knocked her house over. (If her cousin's mother hadn't woken her, she would've went with it.)
I also met with Esau Sinook, an 18-year-old Inupiat Native American who lives on a barrier island called Shishmaref off the northwest coast of Alaska. The island is losing 3-4 meters of land a year and houses are falling into the sea.
"There is an incredibly powerful symbol right now in Europe: the boat. This is in the newspapers all the time. We know what that means. It means someone, in the poetry of it, putting everything they have into a small container and setting off, unsure of where we're going." --Kevin BucklandI also met Zara Pardiwalla, of the Seychelles, whose island home in the Indian Ocean faces saltier soil and bleached corals, meaning fishermen have to sail further and further out to find better catch.
Here's the rub: We don't know what to call these people. There is no label for Kathy or Esau or Zara on the international stage.
One of the most contested parts of the Paris negotiations was the issue of climate refugees. The U.S. removed compensation from the table before the talks even started. Still, even before the final draft, there was mention of forming a "climate displacement facility"—some entity that could help the folks staring out at Island-ruining waves. That got cut, too.
What made it into the Paris agreement is a pledge to "address displacement related to the adverse impacts of climate change," with a report back penciled for next year's summit in Morocco.
While this pledge is as watered down as you can get -- it also represents a lifeline. To understand how to seize it and why it took us so long to get here.
Erica Bower, an expert on "Loss and Damage" with the advocacy group Sustain US, told me that there is "no universal word to describe what it means to be forced to flee from your home." As a result, she said, "there have been so many debates in the last decade about definitions that it's stalled progress."
"Because people have been so fixated on having the right term, they don't actually act, they don't actually create the infrastructures that are needed to support these populations."
Some people want to use the phrase "climate migrants" while others want to use "climate refugees," and yet others want to use "disaster displaced person."
While "climate refugee" has the most punch to it, it's riddled with problems. As Bower explained it, one of those problems are that the phrase "climate refugee" implies sole causality when often climate change is an exacerbating force that worsens economic and political drivers (think: the Syrian refugee/war crisis and the 4-year record drought that preceded it).
Another major problem with the term "climate refugee" is it removes agency. According to Bower, "climate refugee" paints someone as a victim whereas people in Kiribati want to be described as "climate warriors" -- as people who have tremendous resilience and who will fight to stay in their country as long as they possibly can.
Without a name, it's been nearly impossible to rally for the world's first climate lost -- the people who are fleeing a planet that's gotten a lot tougher to live on. Kathy, Esau, and Zara still have homes, but since 2008, at least 22.5 million people were displaced each year because of sudden extreme weather events -- floods, typhoons, cyclones, and the like. That number is over double what it was in the 70s, and is a tenth of the 200 million climate-pushed migrants expected by 2050.
So, as we find footing after Paris, the question is: How do we find footing for the people who can't go home anymore?
The answer, I believe, lies somewhere at the juncture of an honest reckoning of loss, and a more nuanced struggle for justice.
As a movement, we've been stuck with the idea that we can fully and completely stop climate change. The waves of climate displaced--those we struggle to categorize or name properly--represent to at least some degree our failure as a movement to date. It's a failure we need to acknowledge, but more so it means that as we fight for the death knell of fossil fuels, we've now got to include justice for the survivors of a broken world for whom the renewable energy transition will simply come too late.
We saw the start of this evolution in Paris, where the final "D12" action included laying out long red canvas banners on the cobbled streets.
The red lines action began at the "tomb of the unknown soldier," where an eternal flame burns. People paid respect for climate change's victims—past and future—by dropping red tulips on the long banners.
The end of Paris showed a reckoning of human losses, an evolution from the naivete of saving the world, to trying to survive this one as best we can. While this work will include seeing through "the beginning of the end of fossil fuels," it now must also evolve into a global fight for the survivors -- for the displaced.
One other factor can help us seize the Paris lifeline. Symbols may offer a workaround since we've been stuck with clunky vocabulary.
Kevin Buckland, 350.org Arts Ambassador, described how symbols can act as containers for the losses and rallying cries we can't yet name.
Kevin told me about a new symbol that's been taking shape. "I think there is an incredibly powerful symbol right now in Europe, which is the boat," Buckland said. "This is in the newspapers all the time. We know what that means. It means someone, in the poetry of it, putting everything they have into a small container and setting off, unsure of where we're going."
New symbols that show humans in the crosshairs, like the boat, can maybe help us break the decade-long logjam to need the right words and incite the loud movement that is actually what we truly need to help the world's first climate homeless.
One of the oldest symbols of the climate fight, the polar bear, seems like it may have run its course.
At the end of our interview, Kathy, the Marshall Islands poet, told me:
"So, for people whose islands might be drowning, is that symbol not strong enough? Because polar bears are cute, you care more about them?"
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